October 29, 2007

What a weekend I had. I picked Mike up Thursday afternoon and he was feeling rotten – he’d been sick since lunch – so I took him home and put him to bed while I made supper. I was so glad I was feeling good so that I could take care of him – I had a good day on Thursday and had felt good all day. I went grocery shopping later that night and took Elias with me while Jenny stayed home with Mike and watched a movie. I was tired by the time we went to bed, but not feeling sick at all. At two o’clock, I woke up with a heave. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. I went back to bed. I woke up an hour later and threw up again. By four o’clock, I had nothing left in my stomach to throw up, but I still threw up again and then once more before Mike and the kids woke up. Mike was still feeling a little off, so he called in sick at eight. I felt a little hungry, so I had Mike make me some toast and before I had chewed two bites of it, I threw up again. Over the course of the day, I threw up another four or five times and slept on and off in the living room or in bed. Thankfully, Mike was feeling almost completely back to normal, so he was able to take care of the kids while I rested. His mom came and took the kids for a few hours, which was also a help.

I was a bit concerned about being so hungry and thirsty and not being able to keep anything down, so we did talk about going to the hospital in the evening, but Mike didn’t think it was all that bad. My doctor had told me to come in, but I wasn’t throwing up in the evening and was able to have a bit to drink before bed. I woke up Saturday morning wanting to eat, so we went out to eat with the family and I had a good breakfast, but still felt a bit sick into the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Elias didn’t want to nap in the afternoon and was crying hard throughout the day and not wanting to eat. He was acting a lot like how he had been when he last had an ear infection. We went to my sister-in-law’s hockey game at four-thirty and I had to spend a good deal of it walking all over the arena with Elias just to keep him happy. We decided that the best course of action after the game was to grab some supper and take Elias to the emergency room so that we wouldn’t have to wait until Monday to take him to the doctor.

What we didn’t know was that we would be there for three hours waiting to see a doctor. Apparently, about forty-five minutes before we got there (at quarter to seven), a man had been brought in after cutting into his arm while cutting up a moose. He hit an artery and had nearly bled to death by the time he made it to the hospital and was then in surgery for over two hours. The emergency room was full – although other than the man in surgery, there weren’t any major emergencies.

By the time we got Elias back to see a doctor, it was after nine. The doctor finally came in after a nurse had come to give Elias Advil and some Pedialyte, and he said that while his ear was red and his throat looked like the start of tonsilitis, he didn’t have a bacterial infection yet. We left the hospital at quarter to ten with a prescription and instructions to wait to see if he got better before giving him the antibiotic.

We went home, put the kids to bed, did a few things around the house and went to bed. We talked for half an hour and then turned the light off around midnight. We had noticed a great deal of cars outside the neighbour’s house when we got home, but until we turned off the light, we didn’t notice any real noise.

Almost as if on cue, the party started when we decided to go to sleep. Mike fell asleep while I laid there with the wall vibrating behind me. Finally, after half an hour or more, I decided I couldn’t stand it and went to call the police. They gave me the standard response (“We’ll send someone out to check it out.”) and I went back to bed. I heard yelling and talking outside a while later, so I got up to see what was going on. At the end of our driveway was a vomiting man. His girlfriend or some other female stood beside him and rubbed his back while he puked and then dragged him running into the house when she saw a police car pull up.

This was good news – a quick response should mean that I could go to sleep soon. A second car pulled up and two officers walked into the house next door. I got back in bed again and heard a bunch of laughter from next door, but no change in the level of noise. When I got up to see if the cops were still there ten or fifteen minutes later, both cars were gone, but more people had come to the party. The music may have been turned down for the course of one or two songs, but it was turned up again quickly. This went on until after three in the morning. I managed to drift off a few times in my sleepiness, but kept waking up with every new bass line in the music.

Eventually, I thought I heard someone say something about going home, so I took a look in my curiousity and watched as a great deal of people got into a little red hatchback. A man wearing a suit and sunglasses finished his beer and threw the can on the ground while another guy wearing tights and a red cape opened the back of the hatchback. Suit man was then shoved into the back of the car and they all drove away. After that, I think it may have gotten quiet (since I was finally able to stay asleep), and amazingly enough, in the morning, all the cars were gone from the street and the driveway next door. It usually seems that everyone is too drunk over there to go home, but I guess they had a few people who were sober enough to drive (I hope they were sober enough, anyway).

The good news was that we slept until almost nine and Elias was feeling obviously better on Sunday. Sunday is another story all together (we were up late again), but this morning, I was able to sleep until ten (an amazingly rare thing) and I feel fairly well rested now. I also feel like my pregnancy sickness might be getting better this week, which would be a great relief, especially after having the flu.

I am also feeling a bit of motivation regarding the house. This weekend just made things a whole lot worse and now I really have my work cut out for me, but maybe I can manage it now..we’ll see.

October 22, 2007

Two pieces of good news:

I feel good right now! I threw up and the world opened up to me. This is what I’ve been waiting for for three weeks now. Puking really does make you feel better.

The pills I got from my doctor seem to be helping if I take them every morning. I forgot this morning (that’s probably why I needed to puke), but I’m going to try to only take them in the morning (since my stomach is empty) to save some money. It would be great if I only had to have this one bottle of pills and not have to ask my doctor for more. I have five more weeks of first trimester, and I’m really hoping that it will get better and end at twelve weeks.

After I threw up, I went promptly to the kitchen, made myself some ginger tea and had one and a half strawberry cream cheese sandwiches. It’s different every day, but bread seems to be a staple of my diet right now. Maybe it’s not so healthy, but I don’t plan to be sick the whole pregnancy, so I can eat healthy later on. I was reading something yesterday in The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy about being famished in the second trimester and I literally ached for those days. That’s one thing I absolutely love about pregnancy and the first few days after giving birth: all that wonderful hunger and the ability to eat to your heart’s content. Of course, I’ve been fortunate to not gain more than thirty-three pounds during a pregnancy, so I feel okay eating like that, while other women who gain sixty pounds may feel different about it. My rule is: if healthy food appeals to you, by all means, eat lots of it. If you can be just as satisfied by grilled salmon as you would be by deep fried halibut in thick breading, eat the salmon! Eat vegetables that sound good, but put cheese sauce or butter on them if you want to. Throw the What to Eat When You’re Expecting diet out the window. We pregnant women have enough to deal with during these forty weeks without adding a perfect diet and calorie counting to the mix. I believe that diets like that are what make women so afraid to gain “too much weight” during pregnancy. When they gain ten pounds in a month and their doctor looks at them funny (this happened to me last time), they worry that those potato chips they so craved last week contributed five of those pounds. My pregnancy diet is to eat what I feel like eating, whether that is asparagus or chocolate chip cookies and milk.

That’s all for now, but I felt the breakthrough of puking was worthy of a post. Hooray for me!

October 18, 2007

Week six: I’ll try not to repeat too much of what I wrote last week, but it’s hard to think of much right now. My stomach is worse this week and that twin thought it nagging at the back of my mind almost all the time. I broke down and got some pills from my doctor on Monday and I’ve taken a few of them since. The trouble is, they make me drowsy and they cost a fortune (thirty little pills to ideally take three times a day cost me $48.00!). I’m trying to limit myself to taking one only when it really feels necessary, but for the last few days, it’s felt necessary all the time.

Someone told me that the sixth week is supposed to be the worst, and I’m really hoping she’s right. If it gets worse, they may have to put me in the hospital or hire someone to take care of my kids and the house, because I certainly won’t be able to do it. It’s been hard enough this week just to make sure they’re taken care of and we all get enough to eat. The temptation has been ever present to go out to eat when Mike gets home, since the thought of cooking something that appeals to him makes me feel sick.

Part of the trick, I’m finding, is eating things that really appeal to me. I had almost two peanut butter sandwiches (just plain peanut butter, nothing else) and I could probably eat another two just because they are going over so well. At least it’s natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread and not deep fried ice cream or something. While I don’t feel like losing weight is a good idea, I don’t want to gain ten pounds in the first trimester.

Another half of a peanut butter sandwich…that may be the end of that for now, though. The kids are playing (happily? I hope) in their room for now..and naptime isn’t very far away – what a relief! I’ve been taking naps all week and they do seem to help, although they make me feel somewhat detatched from real life. I put the kids down at two o’clock, put myself down a little while later, and by the time we all get up, Mike is either home or soon to be home. Then, in my after-nap stupor, I have to decide what we will have for supper. That’s the downside of taking a nap, I guess.

So what’s for supper tonight? Good question. I don’t have time to think about that – I have to put the kids to bed and lay myself down somewhere for a couple hours.

October 10, 2007

It’s only been eighteen days of feeling sick on and off, but the last week has been bad. I feel like I can eat anything and feel sick, or eat nothing and feel sick. Most things taste good to me, but most things make me feel worse after I eat them. We had cajun black beans and rice last night and I ate a few bites and had to give the rest to my husband and have some plain unseasoned rice and beans instead. Even that made me sick, but I had a hunch that if I kept on with the cajun, I would really be sick. I’ve been drinking ginger tea and trying to wait half an hour before eating like they say you should, but it only helps sporatically. I did make it through my birthday without feeling too bad, so I guess God was giving me a birthday present. Once the birthday was over, though, I went right back to “normal”.

There’s really nothing new this week…I just felt like complaining a bit.

October 5, 2007

It is quite early in my pregnancy to be having an ultrasound, but I scheduled this one before I knew I was pregnant. I was having considerable pain once a month that may have indicated ovarian cysts or something similar, and an ultrasound is the only way to find out for sure what was causing it. I suspected that by the time it came around, I might be pregnant, which would mean that even if a cyst was found, nothing could be done about it anyway. However, the temptation to see this little poppy seed sized baby is too great, so I’m going in for it anyway. I suppose it doesn’t hurt anything because if they find something, it could give us warning for any problems I might have during pregnancy this time.

I have now had two ultrasounds per pregnancy and one when I was a teenager, so this will make number six, and it’s just as miserable as it always has been. Empty your bladder one and a half hours before the appointment (9:45 am), drink one and a half liters of clear fluid (broth, water, clear juices, tea, coffee) by one hour before the appointment (10:15 am) and then hold it until after the appointment is over (which will probably be somewhere near noon YIKES). I shouldn’t complain too much, though…the second ultrasound I had with my daughter was in my twenty-eighth week, which meant that I already had to pee all the time anyway, so adding all that liquid was really uncomfortable. Not only will I have this ultrasound today, but another one when I hit eighteen to twenty weeks.

Status update: my stomach feels ridiculously full and even though I emptied my bladder about ten minutes ago, I already have to go. On top of that, I’m slightly sick to my stomach and only bound to get worse. Also, I’m only halfway done with my fluids.

Back to the subject of multiple ultrasounds. Here in the north in our primitive facilities, we generally are asked to have one ultrasound at around eighteen weeks, as I mentioned before. I had my first pregnant ultrasound at that time, but the results came back with the potential of something wrong with my baby (my now two year old daughter), so I was sent back in for another at twenty-eight weeks. After my first ultrasound in my second pregnancy came back normal, I was very happy to not have to have another one. However, due to the shape and size of my womb when I was in early labour with my son, they thought he was transverse or breech. Turns out he was head down, but his head was up really high (which led to being stuck in a bed with an IV in my arm for six hours, but that’s another story). Again, an ultrasound was necessary to determine this. Fortunately, they scrapped the idea of removing amniotic fluid via a gigantic needle (basically, amniocentesis, just late in pregnancy and not for testing).

So here I am, getting the first of at least two ultrasounds in this pregnancy, and I’m telling myself that the reason I’m doing it is to dispel the concerns of twins that are rolling around in my mind. It was my husband who mentioned twins when I told him my symptoms were like a combination of both previous pregnancies. I could have kicked him. But it is literally true; with my daughter, I got sick from eating certain things, but if I avoided them, I wasn’t so bad. With my son, as long as I ate like crazy and never got hungry, I wouldn’t get sick. I was also very tired with him. This baby is taking it out of me big time, though. Sick all the time and tired nearly all the time, regardless of what I eat or don’t eat and how much sleep I get.

Well, time is up, but I still have one glass left. One thing I could mention is that my first ultrasound with my daughter, I drank all the water I was supposed to drink and then promptly threw it all up and had to start over. I have also had one ultrasound (can’t remember which one at the moment) where I drank all the fluid and then was told I had too much and to go and “pee some of it”. Have you ever tried to “pee some”? It’s impossible (particularly when your bladder is full and has been full for awhile). It’s either all or nothing.

Well, time to start rounding things up and finishing my drinking and trying to stay busy enough to ignore my urgent need for the bathroom. Less than two hours to go and I can relieve myself. Hooray!

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Two hours later: Went for the ultrasound, thought I was going to die, told the tech that I might wet the bed if he didn’t let me get rid of some of it and was told to “pee up to this line” on a cup. Amazingly enough, it was possible and it made me feel better (although I still had to run when the test was done). The unfortunate thing is that it’s too early for them to see the baby. Oh, well. I’ll just have to wait awhile to have my thoughts of twins settled. I’m certainly not looking forward to another one of these, though.

October 3, 2007

On the 15th of September, I decided that I really was ready to have another baby. I have a two year old daughter and a one year old son and actually thought I was pregnant in August, but wasn’t. Upon my sister and brother-in-law’s announcement of their first pregnancy, I told my husband it was time.

The only thing about saying that is that we have never used any form of birth control, so it’s not really up to us. We were married six months before I was pregnant with my daughter, and my daughter was seven months old when I found out I was pregnant with my son. When a whole year went by after the birth of my son, I felt a bit surprised. After all, it had been the longest un-pregnant time since before I was married. However, God must have heard my heart, because around the twenty-second of September, I started feeling sick about every other day. By last week (around the twenty-seventh), it became every day. My sister-in-law got married on the twenty-ninth and I spent the whole weekend fighting the sick feeling in my stomach and telling people that I was 95% sure I was pregnant. My dad was here visiting and even though I was only two days late, I took a test yesterday morning (the second of October) so I could tell him while he was still here. The second line was pretty pale pink, but there were definitely two, so I’m definitely pregnant.

The baby is due on the eigth of June, less than a month after my sister-in-law’s due date. I’m counting on my kids doing really well playing together and keeping each other entertained after the baby is born – my daughter will be three on the first of June and my son will be twenty-one months. This is certainly more space than I expected to have between my kids, and it had its perks. I started losing weight in January and managed to get rid of twenty-five pounds by August, which puts me below what I weighed when I got married three and a half years ago. I have had very good luck losing my pregnancy weight, but I had put on twenty pounds just after I got married. I am still about ten pounds over what I should be to be in my ideal weight range, but I feel good and I feel ready to put on another thirty for the sake of a baby.

I’ll try to update weekly…but no promises. Also, in the next two months, things may not change drastically anyway. But I’ll do my best.